Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  ‘Let go of me,’ snapped Mehmet Batwing, ‘I wasn’t skulking. I came down here to talk to you. I’ve got things you might want to know about.’

  ‘Talk then!’ growled David. ‘Talk!’

  ‘Never mind David, Mehmet,’ I yelled. ‘Talk to us! Where’s our kids? Where’s Gerry? Where’s Jeff? Where’s John?’

  Other people started calling out and coming forward too, mums, sisters, brothers. The Guards quickly stepped in to keep us back and away from Mehmet and David, but they couldn’t stop us calling out.

  ‘Where’s Tina and Harry? Where’s Jane?’

  ‘What about Dix? Dixon Brooklyn, I mean? And Gela and Clare, are they alright?’

  ‘No, talk about Lucy first. Lucy Batwing. Tell us about her!’

  David raised his hands for quiet before Mehmet could answer.

  ‘One at a time, one at a time!’

  He turned to me.

  ‘And you can forget John,’ he said. ‘He’s not part of Family any more. He’s none of our business.’

  ‘That’s right,’ chipped in Lucy Lu, staring at us all with her weepy eyes. ‘Tommy and Angela told me themselves, remember? They told me we should forget that John Redlantern ever existed, and never speak of him again.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Lu, you silly woman, you just told us they were all dead!’ said a big Batwing woman called Angie. She was Mehmet’s auntie. It had been her who’d raised the boy up after a leopard did for his mum. ‘You come here, Mehmet my pet. Come to Auntie Angie.’

  ‘Yes, and I want to hear about John,’ called my sister Jade, ‘I want to hear about him!’

  And she looked at me guiltily, as if she doubted her own right to get involved.

  ‘Gela and Clare Brooklyn,’ someone else was calling. ‘Are they alright? Tell us that they didn’t die in the snow!’

  ‘What about Julie Blueside? And Angie and Candy?’

  Everyone was pushing forward, crowding round Mehmet and David and the Guards.

  ‘What about Dave and Johnny and Suzie Fishcreek. How are they? Suzie’s alright, isn’t she?’

  It was weird. Even before I heard Mehmet’s answer I knew what it would be. Everyone was yelling yelling at the same time, but when Suzie’s mum called out, a kind of hollowness suddenly opened up in middle of all that noise.

  ‘No,’ Mehmet said, ‘Dave and Johnny are still alive, but Suzie is dead.’

  And whole Family was silent then, completely silent. You could hear the hmmmmmmmm of the misty forest all around us, the hmmph, hmmph, hmmph of the trees nearby.

  ‘Dead?’ said Suzie Fishcreek’s mum, smiling broadly like he’d just told a joke. ‘Dead? No, that can’t be . . . You just told us . . . Well, you didn’t tell us but the fact that you’re here proves that . . . Well . . .’

  She giggled.

  ‘No, not dead,’ she said firmly.

  Poor woman. Mehmet had brought her sons and her daughter back to life for her when he came into the clearing, just like he’d brought Jeff and Gerry back to life for me. Suzie had leapt out of Snowy Dark for her, alive and well. And now, a few minutes later, she was dead again.

  ‘Yes, dead,’ said Mehmet. ‘That fool John led us up onto the snow. He had no proper plan. He didn’t know what to expect. It’s only luck that we didn’t all die. But Suzie did die. There’s a terrible kind of leopard up there, a white leopard that can throw its voice from one place to another. It did for her up there, her and one of our bucks, and it drove off the other one with Jeff on it, so we were all left in Dark.’

  My heart went cold. The world closed in round me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Was Mehmet going to kill off my child as well?

  ‘Jeff?’ I cried. ‘It drove Jeff off? What happened to him? Did he come back? Is Jeff alright?’

  ‘He was alright last time I saw him.’

  ‘Well, so’s Suzie then,’ said Suzie’s mum, smiling round at the people around her. ‘She’s not dead. Mehmet’s here, isn’t he? Mehmet is here to prove that they’re all okay!’

  ‘Suzie died,’ Mehmet said. ‘Last I heard all the others were alive. Dave Fishcreek was with me earlier this waking. He came down with me from Tall Tree Valley, but he ran off when you guys started yelling at us and waving spears. Johnny Fishcreek, and Julie and Angie and Candy Blueside, they’re all back up there in Tall Tree Valley. We’ve got our own little Tall Tree group up there. Three babies too.’

  ‘And Jeff? And Gerry?’

  ‘All the others stayed with John. He had to keep going, didn’t he? Tall Tree Valley is a good place – all the bucks you could wish for – but he had to go back up onto Dark again, trying to find the way across to the other side.’

  So of course me and all the other mums and sisters and brothers and friends were calling out to know more again.

  ‘It gets cold up where we are sometimes,’ Mehmet said, ‘and snow comes down. But it doesn’t kill us, does it? It’s not cold like up on Snowy Dark. And it’s not dark either. But, first time the snow came down, off they all went, the bloody fools, Tina, Dix, Janny, Gerry, Jeff, dumb old Harry, all that lot, following that crazy John, that crazy killer John, back up onto Dark where Suzie died, and where we all nearly died, and would have done too if Jeff hadn’t come back for us. Good luck to them, they’ll need it.

  ‘But me and Dave and Johnny and the Blueside girls, we figured we could work out how to deal with a bit of snow. We have figured it out too. We wear thick wraps. We make strong shelters and big fires. We turn bucks into horses. It’s a good life up there. We get all the buckmeat we could ever want, and all the . . .’

  ‘My Jeff came back for you, you said,’ I called out. ‘What did he do? Where had he gone? Where did he come back from?’

  But David stepped in before I got an answer.

  ‘Never mind that now. Tell us what you mean by killer John?’

  Mehmet gave a weird little smirk. His head was cradled against his big fierce auntie’s enormous breasts – she’d pushed her way through the Guards like they were little kids – and he had other Batwing people standing round him, stroking him and touching him like they couldn’t believe he was real. He could tell he wasn’t in danger now and he was enjoying the attention and the power he had over us all.

  ‘Oh, didn’t you know, David?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you know that John did for your friend Dixon Blueside? Speared him from behind when he was trying to get back here. And Gerry and Harry – you know, Gerry Redlantern and big old, dumb old Harry Spiketree – they did for the other two that Dixon had with him. Harry did for John Blueside. And Gerry, well, I’m afraid Gerry did for his own groupmate Met.’

  Oh Gela’s crying eyes! What a thing Mehmet had let loose! We’d guessed that something bad had happened, something bad enough to make whole bunch of them suddenly head off up to Dark, but we’d never known what that something was. Now John Blueside’s mum, and all the rest of Blueside group too, began to yell and bellow across the clearing at Redlantern and Spiketree, pushing forward against Guards, who held them back with the sticks of their spears.

  And Met’s mum, my own cousin Candice, turned on me.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no, no!’ she screamed. ‘I hate Gerry, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.’

  She snatched at my eyes with her nails like a tree fox, scratching my face so I bled. People pulled her off me then, but she carried on screaming. Other people were joining in too, screaming and screaming: Blueside people screaming at Spiketree and Redlantern people, Redlantern people screaming at one another, all in the little fuggy space of the clearing with the thick fug all around and the fake Circle in middle of it all.

  And then Suzie Fishcreek’s mum finally heard in her mind what her ears had heard a little while ago. Suzie was dead. Her daughter had been torn apart by a white leopard that lived in Dark and the snow. Over all the other screaming and shouting, she let out one single horrible high-pitched shriek.

  ‘Silence!’ bellowed David.

  Everyone was quiet.

  �
��Silence,’ he said again, glaring round at us.

  Gela’s eyes, I’m a batface too and I’m no beauty myself, but he looked ugly ugly.

  ‘Screaming and yelling won’t solve anything,’ David said. ‘What’s needed now is to get that killer John and spike him up, just like I always said we should. Him and his creepy friend Gerry and that baby-man Harry. You all thought I was being hard, but if we’d spiked Juicy John up when I first suggested it, there’d be four people alive now who are all dead. This time we’re going to do it my way.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re right across the other side of Snowy Dark,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Thank Gela, they’re far away from here. David is only play-acting. There’s nothing he can really do.’

  ‘Yes, John is a killer,’ Mehmet said. ‘He could have killed any of us. That’s the only reason I went with him over the top in the first place. I didn’t want to go. I spoke out against it. I told him I didn’t agree with the killings. But . . .’

  David took no notice of any of this.

  ‘You bring us down some of those buckhorses of yours, Mehmet, if you really want to be our friends. And bring us some of those warm wraps. And show us the way the others went over the mountains.’

  ‘Oh yes, I will,’ Mehmet said. ‘I surely will. I don’t want to break with Family. We Tall Tree people don’t want to break with Family. One of us was a cousin of John Blueside, don’t forget, and three of us grew up with him and Dixon Blueside in their group. We want to get back at their killers as much as you do.’

  ‘Then maybe we can sort something,’ David said, ‘us and you. Maybe you can be part of Family again.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s down to you, David,’ came Caroline’s voice from behind him. ‘It’s for Council to decide things like that, Council and me as Fam . . .’

  ‘Bucks and wraps and information,’ David said to Mehmet, completely ignoring Caroline – and from that moment on, we lost any last notion we had that her or Council counted for anything at all – ‘bucks and wraps and information. That’ll show us which side you’re on.’

  ‘Gela is talking to me,’ cried Lucy Lu. ‘Gela is talking to me now. She’s explaining things. And I see now why I thought that John and the others were dead. The truth is that they’re worse than dead. Even to the Shadow People they seem dead. Even to the Shadow People, think of that! In one way I misunderstood what the Shadow People were telling me, that’s true, but in a deeper way, I did understand, I understood too well. That’s what Angela says. They’re not just dead. They’re worse than dead.’

  ‘John says he talks to Gela too,’ Mehmet said.

  Michael’s names, you should have seen how Lucy Lu changed when she heard that! All the dreaminess and weepiness disappeared in a moment. Her face went all twisty. She looked like she was crouching ready to pounce. She looked like a hunter about to make a kill.

  ‘Him?’ she snarled. ‘Him talk to Angela? Ha! Don’t make me laugh.’

  ‘Yes, but listen to this. He fools people because he’s got Gela’s ring!’

  There was a gasp from whole Family.

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded David. ‘What do you mean, her ring?’

  ‘The lost ring, like in the story. The one she lost and then cried and cried for wakings afterwards. I’ve seen it myself. You can tell it comes from Earth easy easy. It’s made of metal – it’s smooth smooth, and shiny – and it’s got tiny writing inside it: “To Angela with love from Mum and Dad”, that’s what it says. I’ve seen it myself. John found the ring in forest near here and told no one, kept it all to himself, and then he destroyed our Circle.’

  ‘You went over to him after he destroyed Circle, Mehmet,’ I called out. ‘Stop trying to pretend that you . . .’

  But people yelled at me to shut up. They didn’t want to think about that. They didn’t want any complications. They wanted to think about the wonderful ring from Earth, the lost ring in the story, being found again, and they wanted to be angry angry with the arrogant newhair who’d destroyed Circle but kept the ring. He’d taken away our bit of the past without even asking us, and kept his own bit without even telling. He was my nephew and I loved him, but even I thought that was selfish and bad.

  ‘This is Gela’s Family,’ David said. ‘We’re her children. That ring belongs to us.’

  ‘Gela says we must get it back,’ Lucy Lu confirmed, rolling back her eyes so you could only see the whites of them. ‘I hear her now. Gela says we must get it back. Get the ring and punish wicked wicked John, who says he speaks in her name when he doesn’t, he doesn’t.’ Her voice rose into a shriek. ‘How dare he? He doesn’t! He doesn’t! He doesn’t!’

  She began to shake and tremble, like people do when they’re having a fit.

  ‘He must be killed. He must be killed like a slinker,’ she hissed. ‘Him and Gerry and Harry, all three of them. Kill them! Kill! Kill!’

  Other people began to yell out the same thing, ‘Kill! Kill!’ and gradually it turned into a chant:

  ‘Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!’

  Jade reached out her hand to me and we held onto each other while the crowd around us shouted for the death of our own sons.

  ‘Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!’

  Mehmet had a strange look on his face. Standing there with his auntie’s arm still around him, he looked half-pleased by the effect he had had, half-scared by what he had set off. He had done a terrible thing, coming down from Dark, and feeding our fear and hate to serve his own ends. But all the same, you couldn’t deny – even I couldn’t deny – that it was John who’d started it, John who’d killed another human being for the first time ever in Eden. And that was like the spark that lights a fire. There would be no end to the killing now, no end, not unless it killed us all.

  41

  John Redlantern

  I’d destroyed Circle of Stones. I’d got a bunch of people over Dark. I’d proved that human beings didn’t have to live forever in Circle Valley. I’d done all those hard hard things, but what was left for me?

  Did I do all that, I thought, just to live quietly quietly in our own little family, hunting and scavenging and raising up kids?

  Everyone could hunt and build shelters and raise up kids, that was the thing, and some of the others could do all that a lot better than me. Dix was a better hunter. Harry was stronger. Gela was better at sorting out quarrels. Jeff was best at turning baby bucks into horses that would let us ride them. The one thing I was good at, the one special thing about me, which no one could do even half as well as me, was breaking out of something old and making something new. Was I going to accept that I’d never do any of that again, when I was only barely grown up, and that from now on other people were going to be better than me at doing everything?

  Tom’s dick and Harry’s, no I wasn’t! I needed to make something else happen, and, what’s more, they needed me to do it too, even if they didn’t know it themselves, because otherwise they would get bored bored bored. That’s why people let me lead them, because I knew what they needed even before they did, and because I saved them from getting bored.

  ‘We should go further,’ I said to Tina, sitting at the end of a waking on the bank of L-pool. ‘We’ve been here for two wombs now, less than a waking’s walk away from bottom of Snowy Dark, with whole of Wide Forest out there waiting for us.’

  ‘We’re far enough from Family already, John,’ she said. ‘No one wants to go further than this from their friends and their mums and everyone.’

  ‘Okay, well, maybe we should go back to Family, then? Go back over and get some more of them to come and join us.’

  ‘John,’ Tina said, almost like she was explaining something to a kid. ‘You destroyed Circle, remember? You broke up Family. You did for Dixon Blueside. Okay, Family doesn’t know what happened exactly but they know something did, and they’re not going to forgive us for it, are they? David Redlantern isn’t, that’s for sure. Come on, you know that!’

  ‘Of course I know but
. . . I reckon we could sneak up on Family without him knowing. See if more of them want to come and join us?’

  Tina snorted. ‘Yeah, we could try, until it ended up being us with spears stuck through us and our heads cracked open. There’s a lot more of them than us, remember, John.’

  I sat with my feet in the water, with tiny shining fishes nibbling at my toes. Three four yards out, beyond the trees that grew up out of the edge of the water, I could see pink oysters shining, and I thought of suggesting we dive for them like we’d done back at Deep Pool.

  ‘Or maybe David and his mates would decide not to do for all of us,’ Tina said. ‘Maybe they’d keep some of us girls, and do to each one of us what Dixon Blueside tried to do to me.’

  She chucked a bit of stone out into the water.

  ‘Yeah,’ she added, glancing round at me, ‘and come to that, maybe they’d do to you what David first suggested they do. Remember? Tie you to a spiketree to burn, the way hunters cook meat.’

  ‘Yeah, well. It’s just something to think about, that’s all. Either going back to Circle Valley to get more of them to join us, or pushing forward ourselves. There’s no point in just sitting here.’

  She didn’t even answer that. She pulled her feet out of the water and turned to face me. Her face was tired but she managed to smile.

  ‘So do you want a slip, then? Have a go at making another baby?’

  I said yes, but, once she’d got my juice, all Tina wanted to do was go back to the shelters and sleep.

  I couldn’t rest, though. I got my spears and my hunting bag and went out into forest alone. I’d often gone out on long trips, for two three four wakings. Sometimes Gerry came with me, sometimes Jeff came, riding on the back of Def, sometimes one two of the others, but often I went on my own. I’d scald my meat on a hot spiketree, and sleep between whitelantern roots with my spear ready in my hand.

  Once, thirty forty wakings after we first came down into Wide Forest, I’d been been out on my own like that, a waking away from L-pool, when I woke up from a short sleep to hear a snuffling scrunching sound ahead of me. Thinking it would be bucks of some kind, I crept forward on my belly through starflowers to try and do for one of them. Buckmeat would be too heavy to carry, but I reckoned I could manage to take back a skin.